David McElroy

I’ve discovered that I can’t be free until I stop telling other people why they’re wrong.

By the standards of my culture, that sounds like nonsense. I’ve lived my entire life doing just the opposite of this. I’ve invested a tremendous amount of time and energy and effort in “correcting” other people.

I’ve invested a lot of time in explaining why political coercion is wrong. I’ve invested a tremendous amount of energy explaining why certain people and groups and ideas are evil. I still believe all those things. I haven’t changed my mind about my morals or ethics or philosophical reasoning.

But I’ve slowly realized something that terrified me. The time I spend fighting the things I hate — and the time I spend explaining why certain people or groups are wrong — is the time I keep myself trapped in a prison cell of my own making.

This is a paradox, but it’s changed my life.

The truth is that there is an unending supply of things to complain about in the world — things that deserve criticism and attacks. All sorts of people are wrong about all sorts of things.

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As I pulled up to the terminal at the Birmingham airport early Thursday morning, my eyes scanned for Concourse C. But something in my heart was unexpectedly scanning for something else.

I felt the tug of something from the past. From other trips to this place. From a love that was once powerful and overwhelming, but which has been dead for years.

I had come to the airport Thursday to drop a friend off for a flight to Houston for medical treatment. I used to fly through this building pretty regularly, but I hardly ever have reason to come to the airport anymore. But something about just coming to the terminal awakened memories of coming here to meet a woman who used to come see me.

Which concourse did her flights use?

I couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter, but that bothered me. My heart remembers joyfully embracing her as she arrived and feeling her slip away when she left each time. The memories were vivid this morning, but I stupidly debated whether it was Concourse A or Concourse B where these scenes took place.

It was easier to let my rational mind debate irrelevant details than it was to feel what my heart insisted on feeling.

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The woman was flabbergasted to discover that I don’t own a television.

“But what do you do every night after dinner?” she asked with a tone bordering on shock.

I explained that I spend most of my free time reading and thinking and writing — and I said that I also spend a good bit of time talking with friends. She seemed dubious, but said she could at least understand talking with friends.

She wanted to know how I watch streaming services in order to view the popular shows she listed. Everybody watches those. I told her I don’t watch any streaming services, so I’ve never seen any of the shows she mentioned.

She would have seemed less surprised if I had told her I spend my evenings in the basement making sacrifices to Baal. She struggled to respond, as though her mind couldn’t grasp what I was telling her.

“But that’s not normal,” she finally said. “Everybody watches the same shows. We all talk about them. Why don’t you just get a television? They’re cheap now. And you could be like the rest of us.”

I changed the subject, because it would have sounded too arrogant — from her point of view — if I had explained that the last thing I want is to be like her. I’ve spent years breaking free from the brainwashing of the “normal life” she loves so much.

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